Why charities don’t shy away from advertising next to news
Opinion
Brand suitability has evolved, but more progress is unlikely to come from adding more exclusions. It will come from understanding content more precisely and giving advertisers greater confidence to judge relevance on its own merits.
Brand suitability is often treated like a fixed characteristic of content. Certain topics are labelled suitable, others are not, and those decisions are applied consistently across thousands of campaigns through keyword blocklists and automated controls.
It is an understandable approach when campaigns need to be managed at scale, but it can totally overlook something much more important. Whether a piece of content is suitable has always depended on who is advertising, who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to say.
That becomes particularly clear when looking at charities. While many commercial advertisers understandably avoid difficult news stories, charities frequently seek them out because they provide an opportunity to reach people when a relevant issue is already front of mind. The same article that one advertiser excludes may be exactly where another can make the greatest impact.
It is a useful reminder that context has never been universal. It only has meaning when viewed through the objective of the campaign itself.
The same story can mean something very different
Stories linking domestic violence to major football tournaments offer a good example.
Whenever it’s a World Cup or a European Championship, media reports often revisit the evidence around increased incidents of domestic abuse during major matches. These articles are commonly filtered from advertising campaigns because they contain sensitive language or fall within categories that broad suitability controls routinely exclude.
For many consumer brands, that may well be the right decision.
For organisations working to prevent domestic abuse, support survivors, encourage people to seek help, or raise awareness, the picture looks very different.
Readers engaging with those articles are already thinking about the issue. The surrounding editorial creates relevance that would be difficult to recreate elsewhere. Messages about recognising abusive behaviour, accessing support services or challenging harmful attitudes become part of a conversation people have already chosen to engage with.
The reporting itself has not changed. What changes is the relationship between the content and the campaign appearing alongside it.
That distinction is easy to lose when suitability decisions are made through blanket rules rather than contextual understanding.
Context deserves more attention than keywords
Much of the industry’s approach to brand suitability still reflects the tools that first shaped it.
Keywords offered a practical way to manage risk across huge volumes of inventory, particularly when advertisers became more cautious about where their campaigns appeared. They remain useful in many situations, although they were never designed to understand why a subject is being discussed or how it is being framed.
That is where important differences begin to disappear.
Responsible reporting on domestic violence can be treated in exactly the same way as harmful or sensationalist content. Journalism covering conflict, financial hardship or mental health is often filtered before advertisers have the opportunity to consider whether the environment is actually appropriate for their campaign.
Charities encounter this more than most because the issues they work on are often the same issues broad controls are designed to avoid.
Their approach highlights something the wider industry is beginning to recognise. Suitability depends on context, and context depends on meaning. Understanding that meaning requires more than identifying individual words on a page.
Relevance often creates better outcomes
There is another lesson worth paying attention to.
When large numbers of commercial advertisers exclude sensitive news environments, competition for that inventory naturally falls. Premium publisher content that attracts highly engaged readers can then become significantly more accessible, particularly for organisations working with limited budgets.
For charities, that creates an opportunity to reach relevant audiences efficiently while placing messages where they have genuine purpose. Campaigns built around issues people are actively reading about often produce stronger engagement because the advertising reflects the reason someone came to the page in the first place.
The principle extends well beyond the charity sector.
Financial services, healthcare providers, public sector organisations, insurers, and many other advertisers all have moments where subjects traditionally viewed as sensitive may provide the most relevant environment for their message. What matters is whether the content supports the objective of the campaign, rather than whether it contains words that trigger a blocklist.
Suitability should reflect intent
Brand suitability has evolved considerably over recent years, and that progress should continue. The next step is unlikely to come from adding more exclusions. It will come from understanding content more precisely and giving advertisers greater confidence to judge relevance on its own merits.
That means recognising the difference between responsible, informed journalism and genuinely harmful material. It means considering editorial context alongside individual keywords. Above all, it means accepting that suitability cannot be defined once and applied equally to every advertiser.
Charities have been working this way for years because they have little choice. Their campaigns depend on reaching people when difficult subjects are already being discussed, and they understand that relevance often matters more than sensitivity alone.
The wider industry has an opportunity to take the same view. The most effective advertising environments are not always the ones that feel safest at first glance, but the ones where the message makes the most sense.
Ben Pheloung is the general manager of Mantis at Reach plc